Talk:Don't Look Back/@comment-3575890-20150817081101
PLL SPOILERS Okay, I finally watched the mid-season finale and...WOW. I preface with that my opinion of this reveal is quite unpopular. I know that many are very unhappy with who A is, but putting aside the obvious retcon (which could have been worked around if the writers had only paid better attention) and my biasedness towards my ever-preferred Aria theory, I LOVE this twist. I really do. Even if my ideal candidate is not A, CeCe is a fantastic second choice. I've been theorizing that she is related to Ali and that A is transgendered since season four now, and I am really pleased that my speculations were correct. I know the finale may have seemed rushed - seasons' worth of exposition were hard-packed into a single hour time slot after all - but so much of this makes perfect sense in relation to what we’ve been shown in flashbacks and former scenes: why A always has fragmented pieces of pictures of Ali plastered on the mirrors, why A keeps the girls alive, why Jessica told Ali to forget about the second dress she found under the Christmas tree, why a fully grown woman in her 20’s would spend so much time with a young teenage girl, why Bethany was killed, etc. Particularly, I really love the plot twist of Charles being an MTF. Not only is it progressive, but provided an angle that many people wouldn’t have considered or expected. Because of the male name “Charles”, many fans had been led to assume that A’s true identity had to have been that of a male character, and thus most of the viewership ruled out female characters as candidates. I think this plot twist definitely adds some depth to A’s character and makes them more sympathetic. I’ll admit, I do have some sympathy for A. There is no excuse for the things that she has done, but there are a lot of mitigating factors that put some of those things into a clearer perspective and allow the viewership to look back on those moments through a more sympathetic lens. Just to clarify so as not to sound like an apologist or enabler, I don’t at all absolve or excuse anything A has done; I simply love that A isn’t this completely evil, emotionless, calculating monster that she seemed to be up until now. Before this episode, it was difficult to think of the person behind the black hoodie as anything but a one-dimensional monster with no sense of sentimentality, capacity to love, or humanity, but A is indeed human. In fact, her actions stem from a place of love more than they do from seething hatred like we’d initially been led to believe. I love that all of this time it was assumed that Ali was hated by A and vengeance and/or wrath was A’s motive, it was actually all for love. Don’t get me wrong; a very twisted, misguided, maniacal love, but nonetheless, still feelings of love. In an unhealthy, obsessive, and depraved manner as it may be – A loves Ali, and that’s a turn-out I had never forseen or considered. The same can be said for A’s feelings towards Jessica. Initially, it was a common belief on the part of the fandom that A despised Jessica and killed her. Now we know the very reason for why a young blonde girl turned up in the grave, that which then set about a chain of events that would shake up Rosewood forever, is because A loved her mother. When it boils down to it, every one of A’s motives was inspired by the deepest yearning for familial love. Love for Jason, which led to a post-transitioned A seeking him out and tricking him into “dating” her just to have a reason to be close to him, love for her mother, which motivated A to kill Bethany to protect Jessica, love for Ali, so strong that A tormented a group of four innocent girls for no real reason other than partially out of seething jealousy, partially out of sisterly protectiveness, and finally, more logically, to draw her presumed-dead sister out of hiding to see if she was really alive. A has all of this resentment and anger inside of her, but she also has a lot of love in her heart, no matter how darkened and hardened by life’s plights that heart now is. I find this aspect of A’s personality absolutely fascinating. I see A in a different light now. She still very much has the inner workings of the mind of a dangerous sociopath, but she was once innocent and ultimately has been shaped into this person by a lifetime of loss, loneliness, suffering, hardship, and insurmountable pain. For the majority of her life, she’s been a pariah for the fact that she’s transgendered – not even her own father would accept her and shipped her off to a mental institution to rid himself of the stain on the family legacy that he saw and treated her as. She was ripped away from her family when she was only a child to be shipped off to some mental institution her own father never visited her at and where she was desperately alone. In her pre-teens, she was traumatized upon witnessing a murder she would later be framed for by somebody she had believed to be her only friend, could only be near her family under the pretence of posing as her brother’s girlfriend, and overall, eventually was driven to madness within the walls of a mental sanatorium she arguably may never have belonged in before being put in there under misconceptions. Arguably, her backstory is plenty more tragic than Mona’s. So yes, in the same vein that I sympathize with the person that Mona once was, I too feel for A. I see both as tragic villains and victims of circumstance. And though neither one gets a free pass for their respective heinous actions in the past, they’re not inherently evil and both have a beautiful complexity to them. Going back to my main point though, which was that I do like this reveal, I also acknowledge that there are a lot of kinks in this story. For one, there’s the obvious retcon. While I don’t believe that this reveal was decided at the last moment like the viewership believes since there is plenty that suggests this was the pre-planned endgame since as far back as AT LEAST season four, it is clear that not everything was thought out. The timeline does not match up with the year of Marion's death that was disclosed by Toby in season two and this is indeed a HUGE retcon. There’s also the issue of that the episode itself was far too rushed. It would have been a big improvement if the episode had been stretched out into a two-part – maybe even a three-part – story arc. There was just way too much backstory and exposition to be crammed into an hour. Because of time constraints, there were also still some blanks which have yet to be filled in, but that also may simply require applying some critical thinking, guess work, and common sense. For instance, one lack of explanation is the yellow top phenomenon. Why was Bethany, CeCe, and Ali all dressed in the same yellow top that night? One might assume that they were all gifts from Jessica as Jessica is the common denominator that links all three girls to each other, and that much explains HOW they all own the same top, but what are the odds that they’d all wear it on the same night? Now my guess is that because Bethany wanted to kill Jessica that night, it’s logical that she’d have some sort of pre-determined game-plan; disguising herself as Ali to do it would make sense. Another much simpler possibility is that Bethany chose it specifically for dramatics thinking it would be more theatrical if she was wearing something Jessica had once given to her in a show of affection while killing her. Simply put, it’s still left to guesswork and is a question I would like answered. Of course, perhaps the biggest stone left unturned is who the hell killed Jessica? I’m sure we’ll find out the truth in the back half of season six as this is a crucial puzzle piece that simply CAN’T be swept under the carpet, but now that we know for sure that her murderer isn’t – can’t possibly be A, I am dying to know who did it and why. On another note, there is a major grievance that I do indeed share with the majority of the fandom in respect to the events that transpired in this episode and that is the reveal of Red Coat/Black Widow’s identity. I am SO utterly disappointed by this plot point. I don’t consider CeCe too irrelevant to be A; she’s been around since season three, and she’s gradually become more relevant as the seasons have progressed, and obviously now she is VERY relevant as it turns out she’s been a secret Dilaurentis all this time. All of those key factors are why I am perfectly okay with her being A. But a random like Sara whom didn’t even make an appearance until this season and whom before was nothing more than a name in passing being the second most important antagonist on the show as of right now? Oh, hell no. NUH-UH. This will simply NOT stand. Unless Sara Harvey is somehow actually Bethany and the real Sara is in the grave or something (don’t ask me how that would work exactly, but PLL would find some way to make it happen), this is the single most disappointing, underwhelming idea they could have come up with. CeCe may have started off irrelevant too, but she has earned her place on this show and consequently her right to be A. Sara Harvey, however, is just a nobody and is about as good of a Red Coat as somebody as irrelevant as let’s say Talia from last season being that character. It’s not that it doesn’t make SENSE per se. We know next to nothing about Sara Harvey, so we can’t deduce that it doesn’t make sense that she could be capable of the wrongs Red Coat/Black Widow has committed. From a storytelling perspective it actually makes plenty of sense. Sara has been in that dollhouse for so long that CeCe has had ample time to brainwash her and groom her into the perfect sidekick to help her do her bidding. It’s from a marketing standpoint, that it’s simply just stupid to choose a character that hasn’t inspired anyone’s emotional investment nor their interest. Red Coat/Black Widow should have been a character that has actually left their mark on the series before tonight’s episode. A character we ACTUALLY care about. This for me, was definitely the biggest disappointment of tonight’s episode. (Yes, even more than Ali being married to some random exactly a scene after the cocktease of seeing my beautiful Emison all delightfully coupley) In a sense, it ruined the series for me. I love CeCe’s backstory and her as A, but if Sara is the next big bad villain to shake things up again -'' no thank you.'' In conclusion, I think the concept (minus the retcon and the stupidity of RC/BW's identity) was great. The exeuction just fell flat. Hopefully, next season fills in the rest of the blanks and they bring us a BETTER villain than Sara. One whom is an actually established character. I'll have no complaints if CeCe makes any reappearences too.